Tricky Omaha Hands
Those who play a lot of Omaha know that you’ve often got to commit a lot of cash to the pot without knowing what you’re going to wind up with in the end. That’s because the game involves a lot of chasing draws, and praying you hit them in the end. However, you don’t have to pray so much when you know which draws are good ones to chase and which ones are bad. It’s the tricky hands that you definitely need to avoid to stop yourself from wasting money!
A good example of a tricky Omaha hand would be if you had 8s-6s-9d-5h and the flop ended up being 8h-5s-Jc. In this instance, it seems like you have a good hand to work with since you’ve not only got a two-pair to fall back on, but also a straight and flush draw. However, there are definitely some problems with this hand.
The first one is that your fall back - the two-pair - isn’t much of a fall back at all because there will be a good chance that some other player will hit a higher two-pair. In addition to this, you are also chasing the low straight and flush draws which means you’ll also likely be beat if the card you need lands on the table anyways.
Now this doesn’t mean that you should avoid playing these hands - it simply means that you shouldn’t spend too much money staying in them. A good idea with these hands would be to see the later streets as cheaply as possible so that you don’t get sucked into thinking you’ve got the nuts.